Toronto Twitter favourite @MovieMayor makes his book debut May 17th

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, May 10, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- NEW BOOK DARES TO ASK: “DOES TORONTO EXIST? AND IF SO, WHY?”

Twitter favourite @MovieMayor makes his book debut May 17th in
I OWN THIS TOWN: THE MAYOR BERT XANADU XANTHOLOGY

“Bert Xanadu is to Toronto what Dame Edna is to snobbery: a satire more accurate than the real thing.”
Giller Award-Winning Novelist & Poet Michael Redhill

A Toronto Twitter favourite since 2009, the charmingly bombastic Bert Xanadu -- the mayor and movie showman Toronto never had -- makes his book debut on May 17th with the publication of the satirical work of fiction I OWN THIS TOWN: THE MAYOR BERT XANADU XANTHOLOGY, by Gerry Flahive.

A collection of essays, screeds, proclamations, asides, orders, observations, outbursts and flattery, the book draws from the 9,000 + tweets written by Flahive as Bert Xanadu since 2009, and includes original articles written for the book, as well as pieces published at Spacing.ca and Torontoist.com, a foreword by Lorne Greene (Television Star of Note & Former Voice of Doom) and a sexier foreword by Marlene Dietrich (Chanteuse & Moody Schauspielerin). The book is illustrated by 20 photos from the phenomenal collection of the City of Toronto Archives -- all of which have been re-captioned to transport their meaning into Bert’s world of 1973.

The book debuts Tuesday, May 17, and can be pre-ordered now on Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Books and Nook. It will also go on sale in paperback that day at Spacing, ‘Toronto’s City Store’.

Elected 27 times as mayor, and a confidante of such Hollywood royalty as Morey Amsterdam and Peter Lawford, Xanadu presides over a mythical and dishevelled 1973 City of Toronto and the slightly fictionalized Imperial Six cinemas (Yonge Street’s long-gone palace of guilty pleasures).

Chapters include ‘A Typical Day for A Hypnotic Leader’, ‘General Hooray, Canada's Only Celebrity Magazine’, ‘Why Can’t Men Be Buxom?’, ‘That’s A Lovely Rotunda You Have There’, and an outline of Xanadu’s plans for Toronto Island, ‘The Dominion Nudie Zoopraxographical Hall’.

According to Flahive, “Few things in my creative life have been as much fun and weighted with as little responsibility” as the ongoing chronicles of Mayor Xanadu. “Bert’s world combines two of my loves -- cities and movies.”

“I’ve tried to build a familiar but, I hope, sweetly weird Toronto of 1973. Bert’s city bears some resemblance to the Toronto I first encountered at the Imperial Six as a 16-year-old usher in 1973, getting in fistfights with unruly patrons and organizing block-long line-ups for THE TOWERING INFERNO and THE BEST OF THE NEW YORK EROTIC FILM FESTIVAL.”

“It was then that I truly discovered the downtown — swiftly modernizing, both socially and architecturally — that I’d barely glimpsed while obsessively touring ‘new’ City Hall on my own from about age 9 and learning the mysteries of the subway from my TTC mechanic dad, Danny, the ‘emergency man’. The Imperial Six feels now like a lovable and garish marker between two eras of show business, with elements of the old-timey ‘showmen’ motion picture exhibitors who still lingered back then, and signs of the corporate multiplex approach to movie-going that was to come.”

PRAISE FOR BERT XANADU AND ‘I OWN THIS TOWN’:

Giller Award-Winning Novelist & Poet Michael Redhill: “Gerry Flahive’s alter ego Bert Xanadu is the funniest comic act to hit Toronto since Joan Rivers played Csárda’s. A loony but loving send-up of Toronto that plays with the city’s vanity and aspirations with Scud missile accuracy. Bert Xanadu is to Toronto what Dame Edna is to snobbery: a satire more accurate than the real thing.”

Richard Crouse, CTV's ‘Pop Life’: “I am a long-time fan of Bert Xanadu's surreal takes on life. I OWN THIS TOWN is like Twitter, only heavier! The book is great!”

Actor & Comedian Brent Butt: “I’m always equal parts fascinated and entertained by the clippings and quippings of Mayor Bert Xanadu. @MovieMayor makes me genuinely laugh out loud.”

Anthropologist & Author Grant McCracken: “As if Groucho Marx had a Twitter feed! Bert Xanadu is reckless, imaginative, unpredictable — a Canadian unconstrained by his Canadian-ness. An immensely gifted creation.”

Singer/Songwriter Hawksley Workman: “@MovieMayor is the most consistently funny thing on the internet — sublimely brainy and absurd!”

Film Critic Anne Brodie: “Bert Xanadu is the tops! His vinegary views of life illuminate those corners we might never know existed, and insane policies we didn’t want to know existed. Toronto’s TRUE history. My favourite book of 1973.”

Gerry Flahive is a writer and creative consultant in Toronto. He has been a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail, and his articles have also been published in Time, The New York Times, the Toronto Star, The Times, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the National Post, Spacing.ca, Huffington Post, MaRS Magazine, POV Magazine and The Walrus. He is a National Magazine Award humour nominee.

Until 2014, Flahive was Senior Producer at the National Film Board of Canada, which he joined in 1981. His documentary productions have won many international prizes, including two Emmy Awards, a World Press Photo Award, a Peabody Award and seven Canadian Screen Awards.


FOR REVIEW COPIES, INTERVIEW REQUESTS, IMAGES AND MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Gerry Flahive
647-542-1867
gerryflahive@gmail.com
@gflahive
@moviemayor
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerryflahive

BOOK PLATFORM LINKS TO PRE-ORDER ‘I OWN THIS TOWN’:

AMAZON (Paperback and e-book): https://www.amazon.ca/Own-This-Town-Xanadu-Xanthology-ebook/dp/B09W7TRCLD/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=I+Own+This+Town%3A+The+Mayor+Bert+Xanadu+Xanthology&qid=1649119125&s=digital-text&sr=1-1


KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/i-own-this-town/7KjuVvHx_Eu4jiuRvKI74w


GOOGLE PLAY: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Gerry_Flahive_I_Own_This_Town?id=hp1lEAAAQBAJ


APPLE BOOKS: https://apple.co/3NMSmpH

NOOK: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-own-this-town-gerry-flahive/1141301262?ean=2940161092217

Gerry Flahive
Modern Story
+1 647-542-1867
gerryflahive@gmail.com
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